With the increasing popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web, and the global penetration of the Internet, it has become common for businesses to set up on-line web-based systems such as Business-to-Customer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) models for marketing and selling goods and services to substantial audiences. On-line web sites enable businesses to creatively display and describe their products and services to customers using their web pages. Businesses can lay out web pages having content such as text, pictures, sound, and video using HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Customers, in turn, can access a business's web pages using a browser such as Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Navigator, installed on a client server connected to the web through an on-line service provider such as Microsoft Network or America on-line, and can place orders from an on-line product catalog, or obtain information of their choice from the business's web pages.
Due to the increasing popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web, web site development has become a serious business. One key element considered in any web site development is to provide user-friendly web pages. Users of the web site generally demand the right amount of information in the right amount of web site navigation time. Also, in general the promotion of business goods and services can directly depend on the effort put in to the development and management of the web sites. Therefore, it becomes essential in web site development and management to monitor, analyze, and understand user patterns of web site navigation. Knowing how, when, and for what purpose the web pages are being accessed can mean a difference between simply having a web site and building a user-friendly web site having a sound web strategy. Understanding how users navigate the web site promotes the business's goods and services. It can be critical to the business's success that users of their web site are provided with the right amount information in the right amount of web site navigation time.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a technique that can aid in developing the user-friendly web sites by providing the right amount of information at the right amount of web site navigation time.